Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resins exhibit toughness, clarity, good barrier properties, lightweight, design flexibility, chemical resistance, and good shelf-life performance. Consequently, PET is widely used in the packaging industry, for example, in manufacturing of beverage bottles. Further, PET is environmentally friendly, since it can be recycled.
Conventional recycling processes for post-consumer PET (PCPET), however, typically fail to provide materials satisfactory for extrusion into fiber, for example, bulked continuous filament (BCF), especially compared to virgin PET (VPET). For example, recycled polyethylene terephthalate (RPET) provided by conventional recycling techniques can exhibit unsatisfactory streaking when used in carpet applications and can break during processing steps.
Therefore, there remains a need for methods and compositions that overcome these deficiencies and that effectively provide recycled polyethylene terphthalate compositions, fibers, and articles.